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5 Amazing College Basketball Stats of the Week: Dec. 17-23

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Athlon starts your college basketball week with key stats from the hardcourt.

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5 Amazing College Basketball Stats of the Week: Dec. 17-23</p>

With 347 Division I teams, following college basketball can be overwhelming. Let Athlon Sports start your college hoops week each Monday with a look at some of the most intriguing, most important and most interesting stats from around the sport:

15-for-15: Khalif Wyatt from the free throw line against SyracuseThe biggest win of the weekend came from Temple over undefeated No. 3 Syracuse in the World's Most Famous Arena. The crowd at Madison Square Garden watched the Owls outlast the Orange down the stretch with clutch free throw shooting. Wyatt was the game's top scorer with 33 points, with 15 of those coming from the free-throw line. He didn't miss a freebie all game, including 6-for-6 in the final 56 seconds. The win marked the fifth consecutive season in which Temple has defeated a top-10 team.

25: Career-high points by Derrick Nix in the win over Texas
Michigan State's senior center was the star of the show in Saturday's win over feisty Texas. He scored career-high 25 points on 7-of-10 shooting. He also added 11 rebounds and providing four steals. How much was this game a departure from Nix's career production? This was his 13th game of the season, and he had scored in double figures just twice with a high of 11 against mighty Tuskegee. In 116 career games for Michigan State, he had scored in double figures 16 times before going off against the 'Horns. He averaged 7.5 points per game for the year before the offensive explosion. As a side note, the biggest news of the hoops weekend came when the NCAA announced a 23-game suspension for Texas guard Myck Kabongo. The suspension was reduced from a season-long ban only after the Longhorns appealed. He will return Feb. 13 against Iowa State, giving him eight regular season games of conference play and plenty of time to earn key wins for the Longhorns. In addition to the Cyclones, Texas will play NCAA Tournament contenders Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Baylor after Kabongo's return.

5: Unbeaten teams remaining
Entering Saturday, eight undefeated teams remained in college basketball. Five are left standing. New Mexico lost at home to Nate Wolters-led South Dakota State. Syracuse lost to Temple at the Garden. And Illinois lost to rival Missouri before a raucous crowd in St. Louis. Some of the remaining undefeated teams are not total surprises: Athlon tabbed Duke and Arizona as favorites in their respective conferences, for example. But if you had Cincinnati (Big East), Wyoming (Mountain West) and Michigan (Big Ten) as the last unbeaten teams in their respective leagues at Christmas, then you would have won some serious money. (Note: Arizona tipped at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday against Miami in the Diamond Head Classic.)

1-for-17: Phil Pressey in the first 39:26 against Illinois
Part of the reason the Fighting Illini are no longer unbeaten is because of Missouri guard Phil Pressey, but not his scoring. Pressey did his best John Starks impersonation, starting 1-for-17 from the field against Illinois before making two layups in the final 34 seconds. Yet, in front of a raucous split crowd in St. Louis, the Mizzou floor leader stuffed the stat sheet with 11 assists (against four turnovers), seven rebounds and was 6-of-6 from the free-throw line. And he scored a key layup with 34 seconds left in a five-point game. Laurence Bowers (23 points, 11 rebounds) and Alex Oriakhi (13 points, 14 rebounds) give this team plenty of size — and national championship experience — so if Pressey develops into the nation's best point guard (which he might already be), this Tigers team will make a run at a Final Four.

40: Points per game for UCLA freshmen Jordan Adams and Shabazz Muhammad
In the six power conferences, Muhammad leads freshmen in scoring at 18.8 points per game in nine games with the Bruins. Adams is No. 2 among all power conference freshmen with 18.2 per game. Ben Howland's team has no excuse for what happened against Cal Poly and is still working on developing team chemistry. But losses to Georgetown and San Diego State will be nothing to be ashamed of come Selection Sunday. That said, a huge home game with Missouri kicks off the tough part of the season on Dec. 28. Has the remarkable scoring by the freshmen been a preview of more to come or will conference play and the grind of big-time college hoops slow the dynamic duo down? Additionally, Jahii Carson (17.9 ppg) of Arizona State is third among all power conference freshmen, giving the Pac-12 the three highest-scoring major-conference freshmen in the nation. So they have that going for them.

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